Papua New Guinea

Today’s guest is Margie. Margie and I have known each other for quite some time, and she has the most incredible stories, so I’m very excited to be able to talk to you today, Margie, and hear your stories. We’ve been actually praying about which of the incredible stories we talk about today!

But we’ll start where we always start, which is: how did you become a Christian?

Well, I was born into a Christian family, and so I was brought up going to Sunday School, going to church, believing there was a God and seeing Him in the things around me, and the people around me. But then, there comes times when it’s like you take another step, another commitment to go deeper, and there were several of those during my life. Different people who have encouraged me, who have challenged me just to take that next step, and to become more and more Christ-centred.

As a teenager I drifted away a bit, but then I came back – I was drawn back. Through Billy Graham on the television, I think. I think that’s what it was. [laughs] Then other steps, by other people – real people sharing their faith with me, and challenging me.

Was there a specific time when you really said ‘Right, line in the sand here – from here on in, I’m with God’?

Not that I can remember, but you see it’s always been there, because when I was – I guess I was only about four, five, six, something around there – I don’t remember this, but my father told me about it. You know when people say ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ and [you say] ‘I’m going to be a princess’ or ‘I’m going to be a fairy’ or ‘I’m going to be’ goodness knows what – not me. I said ‘I’m going to be a nurse and look after little black children.’

Wow.

I know I always wanted to be a nurse.

Had you been reading books about famous missionaries?

I don’t know – possibly some missionary people came to church and talked about mission, or something like that. For one of my birthdays I wanted a little doll, and my gran took me to the shop to buy the little doll. We went to Woolies, and there was a black doll there. And she was horrified because I wanted the black doll. ‘It’s your birthday, you can have the black doll if you want the black doll’ – so I had the black doll. So right from early on, there was something in my heart that God had put there, that made me both want to be a nurse and look after little black children.

That’s so lovely. So you just went straight into nursing when you finished school?

With difficulty. We left England – I was born in England – and we came out to Tasmania right at the time when I’d done my school exams back there, and I didn’t do very well. I wasn’t very good at school; I had a rough time at school. When I got here, when I applied to be a nurse, they said ‘We don’t consider this to be an education certificate.’ My mother was horrified.

So they just didn’t recognise your education at all?

Something like that. It was very strange. So I ended up getting in through the back door – I did the government exam, which proved that I did have a brain, and it did work. I knew of the headmaster of our local school, and also an anaesthetist – a doctor who we’d got to know – and they both put in a word for me. And I was simply told ‘Well, you can do it, but the first exam you fail, you’ll be out.’ And I said ‘That’s alright, I won’t fail an exam.’ And I never did. So I got through that; it was hard, but I always wanted to be a nurse.

Why did your family come over here?

Opportunities, I think. My father was in work that was dead-end, in a factory, just piling more responsibility onto him but no more recognition of that extra work. I think dad could see that there were more opportunities elsewhere. We never regretted it. It was hard, very hard at first, but we never regret coming here.

Good. So, did you work for a while as nurse here in Tasmania?

I started off working in a chemist shop and got the sack after a week. I was just sixteen at this stage. I got the sack because I wouldn’t oblige the fifty-something-year-old man with something more than just serving behind a counter. So I got the sack. So that was okay. Then I worked in a dress shop – this was while I was trying to get into nursing, because you can’t get in at sixteen – and eventually I got into nursing. I did my training here, at The Royal [Hobart Hospital], and then I did midwifery in Sydney, and I did child health in Hobart, and then things were open.

So you worked for a while in a normal setting – you didn’t go straight into missions at that point?

No, no no no, I worked in all sorts of things – casualties, and operating theatres, I was in charge of the burns unit, I worked in chest hospitals in England, and all sorts of things.

So how did your faith show in that sort of situation?

It’s hard to tell. I think there were some things like the not obliging the man at the chemist shop. I think those are the sorts of things that come through, but I think at that stage I was not an outgoing Christian. It was very much something in me, for me. And there’s a difference; it’s not until you get to the point where you realise that what you’ve got is precious and it can be everyone else’s that you think, ‘I should be sharing this. I shouldn’t just be holding onto it.’

So how did you get to that point?

Oh my goodness. I don’t know. I guess it’s just taking those steps further when you’re challenged, and realising that it’s not something you hide, it’s something that you share, and it’s something that you need to show every day. It’s not a Sunday thing, it’s not a, ‘Today I’m going to be a Christian,’ or ,‘in this circumstance I’m going to be a Christian, in this one we’ll just let that slide a little bit, it’s not bad.’ I guess it’s just building up – you get to a point that you want to live as a Christian, you want people to see that you’re a Christian, and you want to be bold enough to actually, at times, challenge what they’re saying or doing and why. I think it’s when you get to that point, that’s when you become an active Christian, that’s when you become a sharing, caring Christian. And people know, and they can see where it comes from. Otherwise they just think ‘Oh, she’s a bit of a goody-goody, she doesn’t do this or she doesn’t do that.’ If they don’t know where it comes from, then that’s how they see it. Whereas if they see that it comes from your belief, and from the way you want to live, that’s when it can be useful to them.

So I don’t know at what point I got to that point. I know that in the 1970s I went to Papua New Guinea – I was on a mission field there.

Which missionary organisation was that with?

Well, it was really interesting because I actually went with the Catholic church. I’m Anglican, but I went with the Catholic church – or, to a Catholic base – because they were the ones that were in that area. Papua New Guinea’s divided up – different denominations have different…

Territories?

Different areas, yes. So you get one whole area which is Catholic, you get one whole area which is Anglican, you get another whole area which is Presbyterian, something like that. I ended up there because I went up there with a doctor, and was offered jobs all the way through, and this was the one that seemed the right one to go to. It was furthest west, furthest north, and about the most primitive I think, of all the ones. So it seemed right.

I was going to ask if you did midwifery there – I’m guessing you did everything there.

Yes, except midwifery – they had their own local midwives, and only came to me when they had troubles, and luckily I didn’t have any too horrific things. But yes, challenging.

So that was your first missions experience, and you’ve been in other missionary organisations as well, so what mission things have you done?

I did go to Afghanistan – not really with a mission, but with Red Cross – so I was in Afghanistan for eight months with the Red Cross. That was a challenge. And then I went to Congo, in Africa, with the Leprosy Mission, and I was there for fifteen years … which was a … challenge. [laughs]

I guess it’s been challenging to come back here after that, as well?

It was extremely difficult. I came back and I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t settle back in, and why I was so … confused, I guess was the word. I went to a retreat, and I was spending time in prayer and reading the Bible and that, and we came together in small groups for prayer. And all of a sudden the Lord made it perfectly plain to me: I was so angry. I was so angry with Australia. The anger that I felt was because in Africa, where I’d been, the people there have nothing and they give the Lord thanks for everything. And here we’ve got everything, and we give the Lord thanks for nothing. That was what was really making me angry.

How did you deal with that?

I just gave it to the Lord and said ‘This isn’t of you.’ I can’t do anything about the whole situation here, but at least by identifying it, I knew where I was standing. ‘Yes, it’s exactly that, so what are you going to do about it? Well, you’d better do something about telling some of the people here who gives them all these good things. Where they come from.’

So how have you done that?

Ooh. Well. I tried getting back into nursing, but it didn’t really work, because by that stage I was starting to get a bit old. It was alright while the girl in charge of the clinics was of my vintage, but when she retired and a young one came along, she really didn’t want any older people working there. So sadly it was some not very nice kind of feelings, that – no. But we get that, because you’ve got the difference between the hospital-trained and the university-trained. So I didn’t go, and as far as I’m concerned it was probably the right thing to do, because I left work then. I was old enough to retire, past retirement age, so I retired. And then I could do what I wanted to do, and what I felt the Lord was showing me to do. And He got me a lot more involved in my local church. I try and do some work with the Leprosy Mission here in Tasmania as well, and all those kinds of things. Relationships. People that I hadn’t had time with a lot of the time I was in Africa, so catching up with them and showing them why I was over there. Even some of my own family, I had to explain to them why I was over there.

That’s fantastic. Do you have stories that you can share with us of your time there?

Oh, so many. So many. So many times when the Lord was so in what was happening you couldn’t miss Him. You really couldn’t. Hmm, some stories… well, there’s a story – I was over there, and while I was over there, there were three wars. I would go through the war, and then they would evacuate me out at the end of it. Which always seemed a bit strange, but that was how it worked. When I went back again – and people would say to me, ‘You’re not going back again, are you?’ and I’d say ‘Well, yes! God took me there, and He hasn’t told me to come home yet, so I’m still there.’ So I went back, and I would talk with the people that I knew, the ones that I’d been working with and those sorts of things, and just ask them, ‘What did God do for you during this time?’ Which has been so hard for them. And the stories were incredible.

When I went back after the first lot of fighting, which was really, really horrible fighting, and I was out for nearly a year, and I went back. And I went through systematically with all the ones I’d worked with and said, ‘What happened?’ And there wasn’t one of them who didn’t tell me what God had done. One of the tricks the rebels used to do was if they found a family walking along the track, they would send the men one way and the women and children the other way, and often the men were not seen again. And they were going along, and this family got up to this thing, and the man said, ‘You’ – to the man, ‘you go that way, and you others you go that way.’ And as clear as anything, a voice was heard saying, ‘No, no, he goes with them.’ And they sort of looked around, but there wasn’t anyone there that they could see at all. And so the rebel just said ‘Oh, well. You’d better go with them then.’ And off he went with the family, and he was safe.

In another instance, the rebels had come into the town, and this family were in their home. Now their homes there are maybe two rooms, with a little kitchen outside. And they were huddled in the room praying for protection, because they could hear the rebels circling right round their house. They’re little mud brick houses with a window, and a door, maybe a second window. They’re there, and they’re praying like mad, and they thought, ‘They haven’t come in.’ And they could hear them saying, ‘Where’s the door? Is the door your side?’ ‘No, the door’s not over this side.’ ‘Well, it’s not over this side.’ And they were going round and round and round this little oblong house, and they couldn’t find the door. Guess who blinded them? Because the door was as obvious as anything.

It’s very Old Testament, isn’t it?

It’s incredible. Another time I was in Rwanda. We’d had to leave because the rebels were coming, and the local soldiers had gone up the hills because they realised if they stayed in the town and there was a big fight, a lot of the people would be hurt, and they didn’t want anyone hurt. So they went up the hills behind, and there was only maybe two thousand of them. And all these rebels come pouring in, you see, and start looking for the soldiers and they can’t find them anywhere. So they just took over the town with no fighting. And I’m sitting across the border in Rwanda, and I hear them say, ‘United Nations went to see where the Congolese army were’, because they knew they were up the hill. And they went to look, and they said, ‘They saw that there was about ten thousand Congolese soldiers who were preparing to come down onto the town.’ And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘No, there’s not ten thousand of them there.’ And no-one could have got there to help, to make ten thousand. There was only one, maybe two thousand. Anyhow, the rebels heard this and took off! They just ran and left. And some of the people from the town actually had to go up and say to the one or two thousand Congolese soldiers, ‘Uh, they’ve left, you can come back now.’ And that reminded me so much of the Old Testament story.

What do you think – and I haven’t given you any notice on this question – what do think it’s going to take for us to have those kinds of stories here in Australia?

Well, first of all, you have to actually expect them. Because, I’m sure many times they happen, but because you’re not expecting God to answer your prayer, or expecting God to act, you don’t see it!

You won’t see the thing as an act of God.

No, you go ‘Ooh, that was a coincidence, wasn’t it? Just as we were doing this, such and such happened.’ No, it doesn’t work like that. If you’re trusting God, then He will do something. And if you’ve got your eyes open, you will see it.

It’s like William Temple (former Archbishop of Canterbury) said, ‘When I pray, I see coincidences happen, and when I don’t pray, I don’t see them happen.’

That’s right. You’ve got to expect them, and when you pray you’ve got to expect God to answer. And it’s usually ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘not now’. In one way or another.

Do you have a story of your own life where God’s answered Yes, No, or Not Now?

I remember when I was about to go overseas, I was very comfortable here. I had a wonderful job that I loved, I was in charge of the burns unit at The Royal, I was doing a lot with children’s accident prevention, I had my own home, my own car… I was fine. And you always have to be careful when you’re fine and comfortable, because that’s when God suddenly says, ‘Now that you’re sitting comfortably and I’ve got your attention, I want you to go overseas.’ And I went, ‘Oh.’ So I madly started looking round: ‘Ooh, it’d be nice to work with children, ooh, what about this organisation, what about that one, they’re nice –‘

Comfortable.

Nice comfortable ones, yes. But the doors were all slammed shut. And I thought, ‘Hmm.’ And I can remember very easily praying one day. And I was like, ‘Lord, you’re telling me to go overseas but everywhere I’m trying, the doors are shut.’ The big word there was, ‘I am trying’, you see? Instead of saying, ‘Lord, where do you want me?’ I was looking for myself. And as clear as He was standing behind me, He says, ‘What about the one you’re involved in?’ And I went, ‘Oh! The Leprosy Mission! Now that’s novel.’ And I asked them, and everything flew open. It was so obvious that that’s where He wanted me. He was just waiting for me to ask Him.

So you worked with people who had leprosy, or is it wider than that?

Yes, there was leprosy, there was TB, and because of the TB there was some AIDS work there, and there was a thing called Buruli ulcer, which is a bit akin to tuberculosis.

So there’s quite some risk there for you – did you feel that you were going into a risky situation?

Well, I was going into Congo, so I was already in a risky situation!

Yes, stupid question, sorry. Daft.

[laughter]
Did you just trust God to protect you, or did you get to the point where you say ‘Whatever happens happens’?

I think when He puts you somewhere, then He’s going to look after you. Because He wants you there. He’s put you there, He’s given you the skills to do what He wants you to do, even if He expects you to keep learning just to keep ahead of those you’re supposed to be teaching. Yes, I see it as I’m under His umbrella. He’s got me protected under His umbrella. It’s when I step outside of that and say, ‘No Lord, I’ve had enough of Congo. I’ve been evacuated twice now, that’s enough, I’m not going back’, I’ve stepped out from underneath His umbrella, underneath His protection. That’s when I’m at risk. Not when I’m under His umbrella. When He told me clearly to come home, I came home. And when I came home and had all my medical checks and things, I found I’d got breast cancer. Perfect timing! There was no way it was going to get diagnosed out there. He has our whole life in His hands, not just the edge bits.

So when do you feel close to God?

All the time, in many ways, because I always know He’s there. I’ve always had this vision where He’s just sitting behind my shoulder. And that I can whisper to Him any time, and He can whisper to me any time. He knows exactly what’s going on; in fact, He knows further than I do. So there’s times when you do feel a bit distant, you sort of feel, ‘Ah, what is it? I just don’t feel I’m close to Him at the moment.’ And I always say, ‘Well, guess who moved?’ You just focus again on Him and pray, and ask for forgiveness for what you think you might have done wrong, or stepping away or whatever, and just ask Him to come back and be very close. Because then you’ve got all your guidance you need, and – you hope – control of your tongue, and your actions, and those sorts of things when He’s really close.

What’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?

Oh, I wish everyone would know that God loves them, and that He’s there for them. Because so many people are so anxious and so looking for the answers for everything, and it’s right there! If only they knew about it, if only they would accept it, but it seems to easy just to accept. It’s not too easy, that’s the way he’s made it, so that by accepting Him, knowing who He is and what He’s done for us, then He’s ours, and we’re His. And together we are His hands, His voice, His feet here on Earth. We’re the ones that are going to tell other people about him, and that sort of thing. So many people just spend their whole lives looking, looking, looking, ‘What have I got to do? I’ve got to do all these things so that I please God’, or, ‘do all these things so He doesn’t get angry with me.’ Whereas if you just accept Him and have a beautiful relationship with Him, like you do with a really special friend, then it’s a beautiful thing. And you don’t have to be anxious all the time.

We’re out of time, but I want to ask – what would you tell the Church? What do you want the Church to know?

Not to get too tied up in rules and regulations and divisions. It doesn’t matter which Christian denomination you are, we’re all one family, and we should just be enjoying that and being together like a family. Families have differences and things like that, but they still are a family.

That’s lovely. Thank you very much for sharing with us. I could talk to you for ages, but I probably should bring it to a close! So thank you so much for sharing with us today. It’s been a blessing.

Ep 18: Gerald – pirates and other travel adventuresA Quiet Life

To paraphrase The Princess Bride, ‘Attacked by pirates is good.’ Gerald’s pirate story is the reason I asked him to be part of the podcast, but of course there is so much more to his story, as he says, the pirate part is minimal.

We have a fantastic discussion about the benefits of travelling with your children, taking them to far-flung places like India, and to places on our doorstep like Papua New Guinea, and even just exploring our state and our country. Gerald says that the quantity time you spend with your family on these trips, and the contrasts between other countries and our own are priceless jewels, well worth sacrificing for.

Welcome everyone, today we want to welcome Gerald to the show. I have known Gerald since we were in primary school together but I left primary school at the end of grade five and I think we just completely lost touch. We probably weren’t actually really close in primary school, it has to be said. Then it was really nice when Gerald and Sara and their four kids turned up at my church and that was very cool and we reconnected and I thought it would be nice to chat to you today. Gerald preaches to us sometimes at church, very well, it has to be said. But he’s not a paid pastor, he’s a follower of Jesus like me. So it’s very good to have you here on the show Gerald.

Thank you.

So we start where we always start, how did you become a Christian?

There’s a bit of a story but it’s quite simple really. The typical story, a very familiar one to a lot of people. I grew up in a Christian household and my parents were pretty strict and they taught us well. Very good Bible teaching. And really conservative, church, twice on Sundays without excuse. So I had my parents’ faith up until the time I was about 18. When I was 18 I took off overseas for a year as an exchange student to Sweden and I landed with a family who were new atheist. About as …

As different as you could get.

Opposite poles from my parents. It was, ‘Christianity is a farce, it’s a crutch, it’s a load of rubbish. Science has the answer to everything. Miracles don’t exist.’ And coming from that ultra-conservative background where nothing was ever questioned, you didn’t have to test your faith in any way, to that. I had to make a choice.

I was there for twelve months, I went to church three times in that time, and got to the end of it and I’d seen both sides and just knew where I wanted to go. I absolutely wanted to follow Jesus. That was a big thing for me.

And God, he didn’t leave me completely alone. It turned out there was another exchange student just down the road, an Australian, who was a totally on fire, charismatic Christian. I believe he’s actually a Sydney Anglican pastor now. And he really encouraged me while I was there. And I also had a couple of guys in my class, and this is a school of about a thousand people, mostly there were no Christians, and they just happened to have been missionaries, from missionary families as well.

So God had a way to sort of throw me in the deep end, but also provide some levels of encouragement.

I mean, knowing the school we went to here, the little Christian school, getting into a school that first is that size, and then there’s no Christians anywhere, that would have just been mind-blowing.

Yeah, yeah and there is no Christian worldview anywhere, at all, wherever you go. And church over there is mostly government-run. So most Christians, or most people are members of a church but it’s about being hatched, matched, and dispatched as you call it. And there are a few free churches, and I went to one free church service during my whole time there.

What did you think that God had that the new atheism didn’t have?

Hope, I think. And purpose.

It’s a theme that keeps coming up for me. I’m quite sceptical and I suspect that actually going there for a year and being challenged by my host family, my host parents, actually put me in a place where I do question everything.

What I find is whatever I question, the world, if I remove God, if I walk away from that, it’s pretty dark. And for me that’s one of the key things. I saw that side and thought, ‘There’s no hope. It’s just darkness.’ And I didn’t want to go there.

For me, I like how Christianity answers all the questions. The who, where, what, how, why? Science does a great job of answering the what, and the why, and the how, and even the when perhaps? But the who and the why (the why science doesn’t answer well) the who and the why I think Christianity answers them all extremely well. And for me that kind of thing is important. I need to actually see the reason behind it.

So what do you do for a job?

I’m an electronics engineer.

OK, that shows how much we’ve lost touch.

[laughter]

OK so an electronics engineer is like, maths and problem solving.

That’s my job, that’s what I do. I actually run a small company and we manufacture a lot of bespoke electronic equipment. And specialise in underwater equipment as well. So we manufacture underwater video cameras, video transmission systems for fish farms, data loggers, measuring tools, if you can’t buy it from Big W, we’ll make it for you. You just pay a premium.

So that’s what we do.

That’s what bespoke means.

Yeah, yeah.

It will work, it will do the job you want, you just have to pay for it.

So how does your faith show itself, I think generally people don’t think of engineers as being particularly ‘woo woo’ kind of people, so how does your faith show itself in your workplace?

It’s a tough one. And I often ponder that question. It’s a bit like the ultra-conservative upbringing in my childhood school and church, I’ve always worked with believers. My business partners have always been Christians. So my work environment has always been a Christian environment. So it really is about how I relate to my clients. The language that I speak.

And many people would say, ‘Well, you’re just a good human.’ But I tend to think more about the person I would be if I weren’t a Christian. And I think the dangerous thing is we very often, and rightly so, we compare ourselves with Jesus and go, ‘We really fall short.’ True. But I try as much as possible to compare myself with the person I was yesterday. Or the person I was last year. Or the person I would be if I weren’t a believer.

To me that’s really important. Because everybody is at a different point in their faith. And yes, we should be striving to grow, and we should be encouraged to grow, and work on that.

That’s why you can’t judge anybody, right? Because you don’t know who they were yesterday. They may be the most irritating person you know, but they have improved.

We still have to make judgements. But exactly that, yeah. How can we see people for not who they are necessarily, but who they can be in Christ, if they’re not a believer, and who they can become if they continue on in their faith and grow.

So for me it is very much practical. How am I proclaiming Christ? If you go out on a fish farm, the language is very colourful, and I want them to see that I’m not participating in that kind of life. I want them to see something different. Something unique, something they like.

The way that I treat my family. The way that I speak about my wife. The time that I spend with my kids. All those sorts of things I think are important.

Shining a light. Yes.

So you’ve travelled a fair bit lately. I’ve written down India and Papua New Guinea and anywhere else that you want to talk about. I’ve said before about travels to India that we can’t really talk about, definitely not name, but not talk about the people over there. But how has that affected you? And why do you take your kids?

That’s an easy one with the kids. Why wouldn’t you? I love being with my kids and I love to travel with them and they love it. Why would I leave them behind?

Well, people would say, and I’m totally 100% on your side, but people would say disease, poverty, filth and ….

Safety is a myth. And we live in a culture of safety-ism now. It’s got to the point now where people have actually not thought about whether being too safe is actually dangerous. And I think it is.

To start right at the beginning, the reason we bring our kids along, Sara and I, when we only had three kids, travelled to … just went on holiday. We had some frequent flyer points we needed to use so we thought, ‘Oh well, where can we get as far as we can?’ And we made it to Ayers Rock. To Uluru. So we spent a week there looking at Uluru and Kings Canyon and Alice Springs. And we both thought, ‘We have to bring our children here. We have to show our children this. We have to show them Australia, show them something of the world.’

So while we were there we found out we were pregnant with our fourth. So we looked at the dates and thought, ‘Which year are we going to pick?’ And we picked 2012, it ended up being 2013, we took our kids for four months travelling. And that’s kind of been the catalyst. It’s set us off on the whole travel mindset of camping, exploring, trying different things.

So now it’s just natural that if we’re going to do a trip somewhere, we all or some of us go.

So India, how did that change your life?

In so many ways. In Tasmania we are at the bottom end of the bottom end of the world, and it’s very easy to just live a nice comfortable little relaxed life. And why not? But just to see the contrast, I think that was the big thing for us.

The contrast of how people live and the reality of life for millions just really put into stark contrast the way we live here. And interestingly we only went to India for two weeks after we went to Sweden for three weeks, on our way back from Sweden. So we’d just had this beautiful holiday in Scandinavia and then we went to India. The contrast was remarkable. And then within all of that chaos, within all of that pain and suffering, to see some of the work that’s going on to bring hope to people. And that beacon of light and how powerfully it shines and the impact it can have. Yeah, it still resonates now with us. And even with our kids. A different outlook on life.

So do you feel survivor guilt? Or how do you deal with the fact that you come back and life is comfortable?

Oh yeah, I felt that very strongly. I’ve told people this story before. The first day we were there we’d been out for lunch and I was getting back in the car and this beautiful little girl, white dress, standing next to me, tapping me on the leg with her hand out. What do I do with that?

I think what it did was totally crush my sense of self-sufficiency. I’ve done pretty well with myself, personal responsibility is very high on my list of things that people should aim for, and I take that on myself. But in that situation I had absolutely no control. I couldn’t fix the situation, I couldn’t solve it, I couldn’t do anything. Even if I handed her a coin I didn’t know whether it was going to go to her, or whoever she was with. And that completely rocked me.

Being back here, it’s opened up, I keep my eyes open to what’s going on. Trying to seek those opportunities.

Look, there are lonely people over there and people suffering, but there’s plenty of people suffering right here. In Kingston there are tonnes of lonely people and you just have to go and look for them.

And also, it’s helped our family to be generous in giving, financially. And also praying. We actually pray for India once a week. We eat Indian every Monday night and pray for India. We’ve done that since we got home. And that’s my wife, she’s the one who drives that.

That’s a really nice way of doing it though, as a family, a family get together thing is shared food but then it’s keeping the focus back, and bringing that reminder.

Imagine trying to do that if Sara and I went without the kids.

Yeah, it wouldn’t have that depth of meaning.

It wouldn’t work.

And have you found that the kids have a focus that has changed?

Oh absolutely. Even if you question them about what they want to do in life, the direction they want to take, being involved in gospel ministry somewhere is up there for all of them.

The school has had some mission trips to Fiji and Moz has told the kids, ‘I hate to tell you this, but I’ve just wrecked your holidays from here on in. You’re never going to be satisfied with the resort living now, you have to go behind the scenes and see what it’s like. And do something.’

Cool, and PNG. What took you to PNG?

The beginning of 2017 I said to Sara, ‘I think we need a year off. No travelling this year.’ Anyway, so shortly after that I get a phone call from a guy that we met when we were travelling around Australia, who we got on really well with.He said he was taking his thirteen year old daughter on an island-hopping tour around Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea, would I like to tag along with one of my kids? I said, ‘yes’. Naturally.

We had our first night booked, we flew into a hotel, a guest house in Normaby Island in the D’entrecasteaux group of islands. Same guy who named Bruny and the D’entrecasteaux Channel. And our host there at that guest house was really intrigued by what we were doing and he organised a boat for us, and a guide, and he asked if he could tag along. So we spent fourteen days just hopping along uninhabited little islands that had never had tourists on them and the host just looked after us.

So it’s all just bark huts and tents and no one else apart from locals.

The guide would have been very useful, I’m assuming, with language?

No, they all speak English, really well.

Oh, even in the bark huts.

Absolutely. They are quite well educated and all education over there, all schooling is in English.

Nice.

It’s quite amazing. It’s really good. So I came back from that trip with Isabella, we went together, that was wonderful, to spend that one on one time with her, that was brilliant. And then I thought, ‘I’ve got to take the boys, I’d better take them along on a trip.’ So the year after, the following year, October, I went again and a took a friend from Melbourne with his two boys. And we aimed to do a similar loop. We didn’t quite get to go to all the islands we wanted to, we had a bit of drama.

The weather wasn’t quite as good as we’d hoped, so we got stuck on an island for a few nights. And then we left there and went to an island, called Nuakata Island, which is close to the mainland, and there’s a bit of a backstory.

We unfortunately went during sea cucumber season. It opens every five to seven years.

Oh, so it’s not like time of the year or anything.

No it was just unlucky.

And these sea cucumbers are highly valuable and every single person over there who has a boat and can hold their breath is diving for them. And the market is predominately Chinese and there are Chinese buyers wandering around with anything up to half a million dollars cash. So that is just a magnet for rascals.

Unfortunately there were pirates wandering around in boats, cruising around, looking for these buyers. And they’d received a tip-off that we were buyers and we were on this island. So they came into our camp.

I was quite lucky, I got off quite lightly. We’d been out all day, we’d been fishing and diving, and we’d just been to the local school visiting them. And we came back, I had a quick dip, a quick swim, and there were two boats a few hundred metres off shore. I didn’t think twice, didn’t make much of it. And then Daniel, my son, and I got out and went around behind the trees to the well to have a fresh-water wash.

And all of a sudden my son Joel was sprinting past me going, ‘Dad, run!’

And I said, ‘Shall I get my camera?’

And he said, ‘No Dad, run!’

Oh OK, run.

So we took off and I had Rod’s son with me as well. So I was with three boys and I had one of the locals with me. And we ran quite a few hundred metres away down around the island. And waited. And it turns out there were ten fully-armed pirates with two boats up the beach. My mate Rod had a gun to his back, ‘Give us the cash, show us the cash.’

And our guide and Rod were able to convince them that we were tourists and not buyers. And when they found out they let us go and they gave our stuff back. All they took was our boat motor and our fuel.

Wow. That’s quite amazing. I mean, you can so easily see that turning all kinds of ways.

It could have been tragedy but it’s a cool story.

It’s just a cool story.

But at the same time, it seems to be the story that dominates the trip. And that was ten minutes of the trip. There’s so much more – diving with manta rays and fishing and swimming in these pristine waters and coral reefs and you could go all day on an island under the coconut palms and eating fresh fish on the fire and savoury bananas and not see a single other person. The middle of nowhere. Absolutely spectacular.

And the country, the people there, they’ve got so much to offer. And they desperately want to build these ecotourism ventures, but there’s just a few rascals running around. And so they’re learning about how to avoid them, and which routes to take to try to miss them. But it’s a real tragedy when that kind of thing happens because …

It builds a picture in our heads that is not right.

Yeah, which is not actually right.

There is so much more to offer, and I, to be honest, would quiet happily go back again. It wouldn’t bother me to go back. But I’d just choose a different path.

So you would suggest that everybody who possibly can should get out of Australia and do at least some sort of travel?

Absolutely. I think for our family I know that travelling around Australia for four months, just a half-loop, was probably the single best thing we did as a family, in terms of building our family, growing. You can’t live in a tent with six people, well, it was a camp trailer, so a trailer tent, for four months and not have to deal with issues and conflict and learn how to work through those things in a positive way. You can’t do that for four months without learning.

And if you can’t travel, do you have a next-best option?

Look, there’s so much to see in Tasmania. You can explore for months and still not see it all. There’s plenty of things you can do, it’s just about having, I think, quantity time together, exploring, seeing something different. Being involved in something, even, I’m sure there are projects you can get involved in that people are doing overseas. Learn about it. Sponsor children. All sorts of things you can get involved in.

I understand that not everyone’s able to travel, and we’ve made a lot of sacrifices to be able to do it. It’s not like it’s come easy.

But it feels to me like half of it’s about seeing new things, taking yourself out of your comfort zone, seeing whatever, and half of it’s about building that relationship as a family and making sure you’re spending that quality time and quantity time together so that you bond together as a family as well.

Absolutely, both of those things.

Awesome.

OK final couple of questions that I always ask everyone. And I didn’t realise how hard this next question was until I started looking at doing a podcast by myself and answering the questions myself. So when do you feel closest to God?

I’m just going to throw a spanner in the works, I don’t actually spend a lot of time worrying about whether I feel close to God. Because how I feel about God’s closeness has very little to do with whether he is or not. And if I’m constantly chasing whether I feel close to God then I think that’s a terrible place to be. If my sense of being is somehow tied to that. Ugh no. So I try and focus on what I know of God. And that’s pretty clear in his word. And I see it in creation. And I’ve experienced that in our travels. And through trials. For me it’s focussing on what I know.

And I think I spoke earlier about being overseas as an exchange student and seeing the darkness that’s not there. I guess I hold on to those hopes.

Yeah. Do you do a daily devotion?

Not really.

You just live it.

I try and live it. One thing we do as a family is that as much as possible we have meals together. So dinner and breakfast, if I’m not starting work early. And we read the Bible together, that’s what we do during those times. So is the Bible read? Yes, every day. A specific devotion? No.

Cool, that’s good. I like having different pictures of what different people do, because I think a lot of people do different things, and there is no one right way to do this, because it’s a relationship with God.

So what’s something about God or Christianity that you wish everybody knew?

That same word, hope. Hope and purpose. And the, being an engineer, the answer to the questions who, when, what, why, how. There is an answer. You may be looking for it somewhere else, but hey, it’s over here.

You just need to do the right digging.

You just need to do the right digging. And sometimes for a lot of people that means wandering aimlessly for years. And you need to explore all the other options, for some people that’s what it is.